Exposed (Maggie O'Dell)

by Alex Kava

  “I may have found something,” she told him only because she wasn’t sure she wanted to hear his news yet. “I think this guy might be duplicating certain pieces of unsolved or old crimes.”

  “What makes you say that?” He looked curious but nothing more.

  “I have a mailing envelope I found at the Kellerman house so I’ve been searching—”

  “You removed evidence from a crime scene? A hot zone?” Now he was on the edge of his chair.

  “I double-bagged it.” When his brow stayed furrowed, she offered, “It was with me, on my person and inside here now, so I’d say it’s as safely decontaminated as I am for the moment.” She stared him down, didn’t flinch. “Don’t you want to know what I found?”

  “You know I could charge you with obstructing a United States Army medical operation.”

  “Oh, sure. Go ahead. What are you going to do to me? Throw me in the Slammer?”

  They stared each down again, gunslingers, neither willing to be the first to look away. Finally he did. His free hand went up to his face, fingers rubbing deep at tired eyes, and then they wiped down to his jaw, getting at the white smear; all the while he sank back into the hard plastic chair, but he kept the phone pressed to his ear.

  “I’ll need to process it,” he finally said.

  “It’s yours.”

  Maybe he expected her to argue. Maybe he was simply tired.

  “So what did you find?”

  She explained it him, about the return address, about James Lewis and the Tylenol murders from September 1982, about Mary Kellerman and Mary Louise Kellerman, about the towns’ names being almost the same and how this killer wanted the anniversary to be commemorated with a crash.

  “What was in the envelope?” he asked.

  “Nothing except an empty plastic bag with a zip lock. I didn’t open it. It is evidence.” She smiled at him. She was trying to make amends. He didn’t seem to notice.

  “Well, the Kellermans were definitely exposed to something,” Platt said. “But it wasn’t cyanide. I almost wish it were that simple.”

  “It’s not a poison or a toxin?”

  “No. It’s not a poison.” A slow shake of the head as if he wished it had been. “Not a toxin.”

  She waited.

  “I know you have a medical background.”

  “Premed in college,” she said. “It was a long time ago.” He was making her a colleague so she’d understand his angst. Yet minutes ago he had treated her like an opponent, obstructing justice. Maybe it was simply his exhaustion. She hadn’t slept, either. “Please just tell me,” she said, the impatience slipping. “I don’t need it candy coated but I don’t need all the techbabble.”

  This time he took a deep breath. Sat forward again. His eyes never left hers.

  “Ms. Kellerman has been exposed and her body has been invaded by a virus. It’s been trying to replicate itself inside her. Inside her cells. Bricks of virus, splintering off, exploding the cell walls then moving through the bloodstream onto the next cell.”

  Maggie was sure she had stopped breathing at the word virus. She didn’t need to hear more, but Platt continued.

  “It’s a parasite like one you hope to never see. A parasite searching for a perfect host.” He stopped himself as if trying to find a better way to explain it. As if trying to remember something from long ago. “The biggest problem is that humans aren’t a perfect host. They last maybe seven to twenty-one days. The virus almost always destroys them. Then it bleeds out. It spills out of them and looks for a new host to jump to.”

  “You sound like you’ve seen it before.”

  “That village I told you about, outside Sierra Leone. I held something similar in my gloved hands.” He said it reverently, quietly, like a whisper or maybe a prayer.

  “But you didn’t get sick.” Maggie hated that she sounded so hopeful when his face did not look it.

  “That was Lassa fever. Also a Level 4 hot agent. Same family of viruses. But nothing like this.”

  She closed her eyes and sank back into the chair. She didn’t wait for him this time. She didn’t need to.

  “It’s Ebola, isn’t it?” she asked as she kept her eyes closed and leaned her head back.

  The phone’s receiver stayed pressed against her ear so she could still hear him clearly. So she could hear him over the catch in her breathing, the ache in her chest, the slamming of her heart against her rib cage.

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s Ebola Zaire.”

  CHAPTER

  39

  Wallingford, Connecticut

  Artie enjoyed this part. He liked road trips even if they didn’t take him to exotic places. He liked driving on interstates, being on the open road, lots of time with his thoughts. Some of his best ideas had come to him during his “drop-off” runs. He had even acquired a taste for truck-stop coffee and day-old doughnuts.

  Today his mentor was letting him borrow his government-licensed SUV again. Artie had cleaned it, inside and out. He liked things a certain way. Worked hard to make sure everything was done with a plan, a routine and a dose of self-discipline. Probably the reasons he had been chosen.

  Like his mentor he considered himself an encyclopedia of criminal behavior. Sort of an aficionado of true crime. He could appreciate the perfection, the thought process, the creative thinking and skills it took to get away with murder. That he cataloged a history of criminal cases and put them into his internal memory bank didn’t seem odd at all. It just made him special. It made him perfect for this mission. And not knowing everything was part of the fun, part of the lesson to see how quickly he could put the puzzle pieces together. How else would he perfect his trade?

  No, Artie didn’t expect to have anything handed to him. He had never had much. Early on he learned to get by on patience, charm and an uncanny ability to remember details. And he was a quick study. Though he guessed even his mentor would be pleasantly surprised to find Artie joining in so quickly. He probably didn’t think Artie would be this good.

  Artie’s instructions were simply to mail the packages as far away and as discreetly as possible. Artie chose carefully. He knew a lot of thought had gone into choosing the recipients and the senders, why not the drop-offs, as well? So Artie played his own game of tag with the FBI by having some fun, giving meaning to each cancellation on each package.

  At first he had kept all his drop-offs closer to home. There were, after all, hundreds of mailboxes to choose from. Before this trip the farthest he had driven had been Murphy, North Carolina, several weeks ago. The package had been addressed to Rick Ragazzi in Pensacola, Florida, with the return address from a Victor Ragazzi in Atlanta. So why choose Murphy, North Carolina?

  That one was a no-brainer for Artie. He thought he’d throw the feds an easy one. There weren’t that many “true-crime” connections to someplace like Murphy, North Carolina. Certainly the FBI would peg Murphy, especially since it was one of those cases they’d completely botched for years. They’d have to realize that Murphy was chosen because that’s where Eric Rudolph had lived before going on the run. Rumor was the townsfolk had even protected him, misguided the feds and withheld information. But would the FBI get the joke? Would they appreciate his satirical twist? His goading? His subtle “catch me if you can”?

  All Artie had to do was drop the package in a mailbox at the local post office so that it would have a cancellation from Murphy, North Carolina. As much as he had wanted to, he couldn’t risk eating at the one restaurant in town that had infamously and blatantly advertised on their marquee, “Rudolph eats here.” Instead, Artie had settled for a McDonald’s quarter pounder once he got back on Interstate 95. Not a sacrifice at all. Artie loved McDonald’s quarter pounders.

  The trip to Murphy had been an eight-hour drive, one way, 460 miles. Wallingford would be twenty-nine miles less. However, Wallingford, as a chosen drop-off, had been tougher for Artie to put together and he knew it wouldn’t be as obvious to his FBI adversaries, although it had been
another case they’d botched for months.

  He congratulated himself on this particular data retrieval in choosing this drop-off site. It was an ingenious and poignant example of random innocents getting caught in the cross fire. What the FBI or the military would call collateral damage. What Artie liked to call a “bonus kill.” But would the feds even recognize it?

  So why Wallingford, Connecticut? In the fall of 2001 there was a ninetysomething-year-old widow—okay, so he couldn’t be expected to retrieve every detail like her exact age—who had been one of the anthrax killer’s victims. Ottilie W. Lundgren lived in Oxford, Connecticut. She rarely left her home, and as far as anyone could determine, she hadn’t been a direct target of the anthrax killer. Somehow her mail had unfortunately come in contact with anthrax-laced mail that had gone through the Southern Connecticut Processing and Distribution Center in Wallingford.

  The FBI didn’t find anthrax anywhere in her little house. But anthrax did show up in Seymour, Connecticut, about three miles away. Cross-contamination had been the final explanation. Authorities considered it a random and unfortunate incident. Family members called it “senseless.” Artie thought that random and senseless were two things he didn’t mind.

  Now as Artie steered the SUV around a second reservoir he glanced at the Google map on the passenger seat. He must have gone the wrong direction. He had taken the Center Street exit off of Interstate 91. Certainly there was no post office out here.

  He found a place to pull over. He didn’t have time to sightsee, though the winding roads were inviting and the turning foliage sorta cool. What interested Artie even more was the fact that not far from here was a deserted rock quarry where bodies had been found in fifty-five-gallon drums. Bodies with missing pieces. Yes, it was difficult being a crime buff, being so close to a crime scene and not able to visit. He imagined it was no different than a Civil War buff being close to Gettysburg and wanting to just take a step onto those hollowed grounds.

  Another time, perhaps. Artie turned the SUV around and headed in the other direction, this time easily finding where East Center became Center and then making his way to Main Street where he could see the post office. He turned into the driveway for the drop-off mailboxes. The SUV’s tinted windows would obscure any cameras, if there were any. He grabbed the two packages off the floor.

  Then he dropped them into the mailbox slot, one addressed to Benjamin Tasker Middle School in Bowie, Maryland, and the other addressed to Caroline Tully in Cleveland, Ohio.

  CHAPTER

  40

  North Platte, Nebraska

  Patsy Kowak looked forward to Saturdays. She’d pick up her daughter and the two of them would go into town for their book-club meeting. They usually met at the café. A corner table that fit all seven of them. The owner of the local bookstore, A to Z Books, offered recommendations, and for the last two years their club had read novels Patsy would have never chosen on her own. This week’s selection was by a local author, a mystery writer named Patricia Bremmer. Patsy finished it in two days, partly thanks to Ward not talking to her. Maybe if the silence continued she’d get all kinds of things accomplished.

  Only a week until the wedding. She had to admit she was excited, not just for her son and for the day, but to get away. As much as she loved her home and this ranch, she did enjoy a change of pace. It had been ages since she and Ward had been anywhere. Okay, so it was only Cleveland with a layover at O’Hare, but even Cleveland sounded exotic right now. And though there would be few family and friends able to make the trip from Nebraska, Conrad had told Patsy that they expected over two hundred people, mostly friends and colleagues. Patsy couldn’t imagine even a pharmaceutical vice president and the CEO of an advertising agency having that many friends and colleagues. But Conrad was excited and happy and that’s what was important. This woman made her Conrad happy like no other person had been able to.

  Patsy ran a brush through her hair. It didn’t look bad despite her habit of sometimes trimming chunks that didn’t belong. It was a nervous habit, worse when she was under stress. In fact, Ward could always tell if she was having a bad day. Earlier in the week he had asked if her bangs were shorter. A simple yes made him nod and back off.

  But now instead of her hair she noticed her hands. They were more red and chapped than usual from brushing down the horses and digging up the last of her vegetable garden. She traded the hairbrush for cuticle scissors and went after the ragged skin, trying to make her fingers more presentable but leaving one bleeding.

  She hadn’t had a professional manicure for ages but knew it was out of the question. Ward had already lectured her about running up their credit card. It was just another way for him to voice his complaints about the wedding since the only purchases she had made were a new dress and luggage for the trip. She refused to drag out the worn old set they had. It was ancient and didn’t even have rollers. No wonder Conrad was convinced all his father thought about was money. Which reminded her. She didn’t have any cash and wouldn’t have time to stop at the bank.

  She opened the bottom drawer to her dresser, uncovered the square box she used for loose change and trinkets. That was also where she had hidden the plastic bag with cash from Conrad. Ward would never go through Patsy’s dresser drawers, so she knew it was safe there. She hadn’t really intended to use the money. She could stop at the bank after the book-club meeting and replace it later. What harm could there be in using it and replacing it?

  She opened the plastic bag, reached in and pulled out one of the twenty-dollar bills.

  CHAPTER

  41

  Quantico, Virginia

  Tully had heard him the first time. He didn’t need George Sloane to inform him again that Tully and Ganza had “exactly fifteen minutes” before Sloane had to return to his class.

  Tully watched the man make a ceremony of sitting down in front of the documents like a priest about to perform some sacred ritual. He played the role of professor very well, even dressed it—black knit turtleneck, tight enough to show off his trim physique, along with well-pressed trousers and matching suit jacket. He wasn’t a big man, five-foot-seven. His strut into the room asked for but didn’t quite command attention. He was Tully’s age but had none of the salt-and-pepper Tully had been discovering at his own temples. Instead, Sloane’s thick hair, that he wore long enough to curl over the turtleneck, was almost jet-black, and Tully suspected it was because of Grecian hair formula rather than youthful genes.

  “The lighting is horrendous in here,” Sloane announced in place of a greeting. “Does Cunningham expect me to work miracles?”

  Tully wanted to say, “No, just your regular voodoo will do.” Instead, he said what he knew would pacify the man and not waste their precious fifteen minutes. “We’re just grateful you can take time out to help us, George. Anything you can offer will be appreciated.”

  “See if you can find me a better light,” Sloane told Ganza, dismissing the director of the lab with a wave of his hand as if Ganza were one of his college students.

  Ganza stared at Sloane’s back for a second or two then glanced at Tully, who could only offer a shrug. Ganza checked his watch then pulled down the bill of his Red Sox cap and headed for the conference room’s supply closet.

  “So terrorists are delivering their threats at the bottom of doughnut boxes now?” Sloane said, scooting his chair closer to the table. “Where were you at the time?” he asked Tully. “If I remember correctly, you can’t resist a chocolate doughnut.”

  “Stuck in traffic,” Tully said, trying not to show his annoyance and impatience. Sloane had already used up five minutes fidgeting with his preparations.

  “Thank God for morning rush hour, huh?”

  Ganza hauled a long, metal contraption out of the storage closet that looked like something from a garage sale. He set it on the table beside Sloane.

  “What the hell is this?” Sloane sat back as if the thing had accosted him.

  Ganza ignored him. He unwrapped t
he cord, plugging it in and then snapping on the fluorescent lamp. It lit the area enough that even Sloane couldn’t complain though he grumbled a bit before scooting his chair back into position.

  He picked up the plastic bag with the envelope first, holding it up and examining it, pursing his lips and furrowing his brow. Tully couldn’t help thinking of Johnny Carson’s Carnac the Magnificent.

  “Uppercase,” Sloane mumbled under his breath like it was exactly what he had expected. “Every maniac from the Unabomber to the Zodiac killer used uppercase printing. In everyday life few people print entire words and phrases in uppercase, so it’s more difficult to match.”

  “So it’s easier to disguise their handwriting,” Ganza said from his perch standing over Sloane’s left shoulder.

  “That’s what I just said. If you already know all this why did Cunningham call me in?”

  Tully watched from across the room as the two men exchanged glares. Ganza was totally harmless, definitely not the type who engaged in pissing contests. He was a professional, and he was actually a bit of an introvert. Perhaps George Sloane brought out the worst in everyone.

  When Sloane seemed satisfied that Ganza would no longer interrupt he sat up even taller in the chair.

  “It’s not just about disguising his handwriting,” Sloane continued. “Uppercase gives an appearance of urgency to the message. He’s shouting it. But see here,” and Sloane held up the plastic-encased envelope and pointed. “He pushed down harder on the periods after Mr. and F.B.I. He’s taken time to carefully print out the message, letter by letter, but those periods almost poke through the paper. He’s revealing a bit of emotion there.”

  “Yeah, what’s up with him putting periods after each letter of FBI?” Ganza wanted to know while Tully wanted to wince. Didn’t Ganza get it, that he was supposed to be quiet and this would take less time. Be less painful. Tully waited for Sloane’s look of simmered annoyance and wasn’t disappointed. Ganza, however, seemed oblivious to it.